Chapter 2

My head snapped up toward my mother.

"Mother, this wasn't my fault."

Howard was the one who'd wanted her and provoked the princess in the first place.

Frantic, I caught at the hem of her skirt.

Even my father was staring at her, startled.

"Cecil is your own flesh and blood. You'd really send him?"

"You must be joking, husband. Your children are all my children, and I have always treated them the same."

She pulled the skirt free of my grip and met my eyes without a trace of feeling.

"If there's anyone to blame, blame yourself for not keeping better watch over Howard."

I looked helplessly toward my brother and my father.

But my father only nodded, satisfied.

"Anya, you truly are a virtuous woman. I did not marry wrong."

My brother avoided my eyes. His tears had dried up too.

My mother had them drag me off to the family shrine.

"Your brother has already admitted his fault, and still you refuse to see yours. Kneel there for a night and clear your head."

My attendant Alden Malone rushed to help me toward the shrine.

The slightest movement of my back sent a tearing pain through me. I could barely stand, and leaned my whole weight on Alden.

I breathed the words against his ear, faint as a thread.

"Go find him. Bring him to save me."

Alden didn't let a flicker of anything show on his face. He only nodded, barely.

Once again I knelt in the shrine.

Pain shot through my knees in waves.

A sound came from the shrine door, so faint it was almost nothing.

I didn't turn. I kept my spine straight.

The matron my mother had sent found no fault in me and slipped away.

But I still didn't dare relax.

If the matron caught me slacking, kneeling improperly, and carried word to my mother, a beating with the rod would surely follow.

Cold sweat soaked through my clothes, dried half-dry against the heat of my body, then soaked through again. On and on.

My vision slowly blurred.

Memories of my childhood rose up in my mind.

I had known good days once.

Back then my true father was still alive, and my mother had not yet been like this toward me.

He used to carry me on his shoulders and call me his treasure, while my mother sat beside us embroidering, watching us with a gentle look.

Then my father died.

My grandfather wanted my mother to remarry, to become the marquess's second wife.

The truth was my mother's standing was far beneath a house like the marquess's, all the more so as a widow.

But the marquess thought a woman of her station suited him perfectly, easy to control. He already had a legitimate son and daughter and had no need for other children.

And so, under the watching eyes of the whole capital hungry for a show, my mother married the marquess.

I was forced to change my name too.

After she married the marquess, my mother changed.

Everyone watched her every move, the marquess included, terrified she might mistreat her stepchildren.

Three years had passed since the marquess's first wife died. He was buried in official duties and neglected their upbringing, and my younger brother and sister had grown crooked in temper.

As the second wife, my mother could do nothing right.

If she disciplined them strictly and taught my brother how to conduct himself, the old marchioness, who doted on her grandchildren, would summon my mother for a scolding: a stepmother was a stepmother after all, tormenting the first wife's children while she herself still lived. If she let everything slide, then people said she was spoiling the stepchildren to death to clear the way for her own child.

She thought on it a long time, and at last she hit upon a way to make an example of one to warn the rest.

She couldn't punish other people's children. But her own child, surely, was fair game.

So when my brother and sister did wrong, I was punished, and they watched.

That way they understood where they'd erred, and no real harm ever came to them.

The method worked well. My brother and sister began to obey her, and the old marchioness and the marquess praised her, satisfied, as a virtuous woman.

And I, the wounds on my body never healed for a single day.

"Mother, you see? I knew he was no honest boy!"

The shrine door was kicked open, and Alden was thrown inside.